The most significant conquest of the twentieth century may well have been the triumph of American consumer society over Europe's bourgeois civilization. It is this little-understood but world-shaking campaign that unfolds in de Grazia's account of how the American standard of living defeated the European way of life and achieved the global cultural hegemony that is both its great strength and its key weakness today. Tracing the peculiar alliance that arrayed New World salesmanship, statecraft, and standardized goods against the Old World's values of status, craft, and good taste, de Grazia describes how all alternative strategies fell before America's consumer-oriented capitalism--first the bourgeois lifestyle, then the Third Reich's command consumption, and finally the grand experiment of Soviet-style socialist planning.--From publisher description.

This book interrogates the nature of anti-Americanism today and over the last century. It asks several questions: How do we define the phenomenon from different perspectives: political, social, and cultural? What are the historical sources and turning points of anti-Americanism in Europe and elsewhere? What are its links with anti-Semitic sentiment? Has anti-Americanism been beneficial or self-destructive to its “believers”? Finally, how has the United States responded and why? The authors, scholars from a multitude of countries, tackle the potential political consequences of anti-Americanism in Eastern and Central Europe, the region that has been perceived as strongly pro-American.

"A collection of essays that discuss representative eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French and English views of American democracy and society, and offer a critical assessment of various narrative constructions of American life, society, and culture"--Provided by publisher.

An ambitious, original book describing a century of Europe coping with America: its inventions, personalities, films, armies, business, and politics. These decades reveal how much emotional energy Europeans invested in finding their own ways to reconcile tradition and modernity under the pressure of the ever-evolving American challenge.

The relationship between the US and Europe in the 20th century is one of the key considerations in any understanding of international relations/international history during this period. David Ryan first sets the context by looking at the trends and traditions of America’s foreign relations in the 19th century, and then considers the changing nature of America's vision of Europe from 1900 to the present. The book examines America’s response to and involvement in the two World Wars, including the structure of international power after the First World War and American reaction to the rise of Nazi Germany. American/European relations during the Cold War (1945-1970) are discussed, and Ryan considers the contentious debate that America was trying to establish an empire by invitation. Finally, the book looks at the ever-increasing unification of Europe and how this has affected America's role and influence.

Many thought the 21st century would witness political, economic and even ideological convergence amongst the countries of the West. This has not happened. Today we see America 'growing apart' from her democratic allies and neighbors. Growing Apart shows how the social, political, and economic forces shaping advanced democratic states are pushing America in different directions from the rest of the democratic world and argues that these changes are not the product of any particular president or government. This volume brings together a set of leading scholars who each examine the evolution of different social, political, and economic forces shaping Europe and America. It is the first book to unite the international relations scholarship on transatlantic relations with the comparative politics literature on the varieties of capitalism. Taken together, the essays in this volume address whether the 'West' will continue to remain a coherent entity in the 21st century.

An unprecedented account of the American Century in Europe, ranging from economics, culture and consumption to war, politics and diplomacy.

Scholars analyze why and how the United States pulled away from its democratic allies following the Cold War.

This book offers an overview of the interface between European integration, transatlantic relations, and the 'rise of the rest' in the early 21st century. The collapse of the Soviet bloc opened up an era in which the drivers and perceived benefits of the US alliance among European countries have become more variegated and shifting. The proposition that the US remains at once an 'indispensable' and 'intolerable' nation in Europe is a key concept in the alliance, as the US remains inextricably tied to the continent through economic, military and cultural links. This work examines this complex subject area from many angles, including an analysis of the historical and cultural contexts of America’s relations with Europe, as well as a discussion of the politics of transatlantic affairs which utilises evidence gleaned from a series of case-studies. In the concluding chapters, the author assesses the likelihood that the West can entrench its global dominance in the realms of "soft" and "hard" power, and by effecting a "controlled reform" that will see multilateral structures open up to emerging powers. This book will be of great interest to students of European Politics, EU integration, transatlantic relations, US foreign policy/diplomacy, International Security and IR in general.